General news about Fabricated and Induced Illness syndrome (FII)

[bicentennial]

I did not know it had been referred to the Law Commission. Have you any links?

I think that NICE, the Family Court, NHS England, and the Children's Commissioner should have told you in reply to your letter. Or at least passed on your letter, since they do prioritise safeguarding. After all, you could have been consulted on this legal reform, and as you said:

... there is no excuse for ignorance in the Law

Thankyou @Tilly and @Maat. You posted in August 2025.

The Final Delivery Plan for ME/CFS was published on 25 July 2025, as a Policy Paper for the Departments of Education, Work & Pensions, also Health & Social Care.

The IDP [Interim Delivery Plan?] had agreed [when?] that:

the Law Commission will review existing social care legislation relating to disabled children, to improve clarity for families about the support that they are legally entitled to, ensuring that local authorities know what they are expected to provide, and families know how to access support

Did this review happen yet? Is it published, or is it not yet presentable? What were the local authorities told to provide for? Do families now know how to access what?

DHSC will engage stakeholders to discuss timely diagnosis and support for children who have ME/CFS and their families as well as best practice in relation to safeguarding responsibilities

Oh good. Maybe the DHSC already had a definition from the Law Commission.

Where is the best safeguarding practice defined? Apart from the definitive NICE Recommendation on ME/CFS Safeguarding, and the BASW procedure for suspected FII Safeguarding. Because no stakeholder dared present confidential safeguarding definitions to NICE. Not for the asking. Only children, families and carers dared

In the consultation, 98.5% of respondents selected ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ to the contents outlined in the ‘Support for children and young people with ME/CFS’ section of the IDP.

Nice. We got most of the targeted minors theoretically helped. Are there signs that this was delivered in practice?

However, respondents made suggestions on where we could improve actions, particularly regarding:

- the pressure and harm of physical attendance

- improving awareness to prevent harm from false accusation of fabricated illness

- adaptations to physical environments and integration of pacing to support education

- the need for education and recognition of ME/CFS as a disability to improve access to support in schools

- the difficulty accessing timely support for children

- financial pressures for families and support for adapting education

The Law Commission DID examine the evidence, and made its Recommendations already. Parliament held out a bit longer for some autism report. But the French are being pointed at us in the UK, now, by some French eejit trashing our health and safety criteria as determined by NICE. Apparently we deluded our government too, lol.

As such, in addition to the actions agreed in the IDP, we have agreed that DfE will embed ME/CFS-specific considerations into its broader approach to education, including by sharing relevant training, resources and guidance with alternative provision settings and local authorities.

In addition, DfE will explore opportunities to raise awareness and promote understanding of ME/CFS across the education sector. This includes engaging with stakeholders, disseminating best practice, and ensuring that guidance and communications reflect the needs of children with complex medical conditions.

So are children still being persecuted or did it all stop? Did disabled parents get a new report to update on the Jigsaw Report? Did the Social Workers relent when assessing provision for Community Care, and for Children and Families? Did they start to reveal and offer the liberating personal budgets, as directed (since 2010).

Also, there are clauses for disabled children in the new law recommendations that should apply to all children. And - due to some hair-raising reports - I want to see protections for children being confidentially researched by enforcing doctors.

Safe-guarding service networks were too confused to be safe, so they only need to read the NICE Guideline. But when a safe-guarder lies it is with malice aforethought.

Attached file is the
Impact Assessment for the Final Report on Disabled Children's Social Care

 

[bicentennial]

The attached .pdf file is a Research Report (345 pages):

The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care – Final report, May 2022

This contains one recommendation for Disabled Children's Social Care, as referred to the Law Commission for Review

 

[Amw66]

I think that NICE, the Family Court, NHS England, and the Children's Commissioner should have told you in reply to your letter. Or at least passed on your letter, since they do prioritise safeguarding. After all, you could have been consulted on this legal reform, and as you said:



Thankyou @Tilly and @Maat. You posted in August 2025.

The Final Delivery Plan for ME/CFS was published on 25 July 2025, as a Policy Paper for the Departments of Education, Work & Pensions, also Health & Social Care.

The IDP [Interim Delivery Plan?] had agreed [when?] that:



Did this review happen yet? Is it published, or is it not yet presentable? What were the local authorities told to provide for? Do families now know how to access what?



Oh good. Maybe the DHSC already had a definition from the Law Commission.

Where is the best safeguarding practice defined? Apart from the definitive NICE Recommendation on ME/CFS Safeguarding, and the BASW procedure for suspected FII Safeguarding. Because no stakeholder dared present confidential safeguarding definitions to NICE. Not for the asking. Only children, families and carers dared



Nice. We got most of the targeted minors theoretically helped. Are there signs that this was delivered in practice?









The Law Commission DID examine the evidence, and made its Recommendations already. Parliament held out a bit longer for some autism report. But the French are being pointed at us in the UK, now, by some French eejit trashing our health and safety criteria as determined by NICE. Apparently we deluded our government too, lol.




So are children still being persecuted or did it all stop? Did disabled parents get a new report to update on the Jigsaw Report? Did the Social Workers relent when assessing provision for Community Care, and for Children and Families? Did they start to reveal and offer the liberating personal budgets, as directed (since 2010).

Also, there are clauses for disabled children in the new law recommendations that should apply to all children. And - due to some hair-raising reports - I want to see protections for children being confidentially researched by enforcing doctors.

Safe-guarding service networks were too confused to be safe, so they only need to read the NICE Guideline. But when a safe-guarder lies it is with malice aforethought.

Attached file is the
Impact Assessment for the Final Report on Disabled Children's Social Care

@bicentennial

Have the UN "Rights of the Child" been enacted into law in England and Wales?

ETA - Was the Children's Commissioner consulted during this process ?

 

[bicentennial]

Have the UN "Rights of the Child" been enacted into law in England and Wales?

ETA - Was the Children's Commissioner consulted during this process ?

@Amw66
So far I saw nothing in the Law Commission's documents about the UN Rights of the Child or the Children's Commissioner.

But they might be recognisable in the Law Commission's Recommendations and in the Governments 2026 responses (details, links, files and index to follow)

The Government's responses were generated by the Department for Education
~ Josh MacAlister, OBE, MP Minister for Children and Families

In reply to the Commissioner for Public Law and the Law in Wales
~ Professor Alison Young of the Law Commission
~ at Alison.Young@lawcommission.gov.uk

 

[bicentennial]

Timeline:
======

The Law Commission's Review was carried out at the request of the Department for Education. It arose from one of the recommendations in the Research Report:
Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, May 2022, chaired by one Josh MacAlister (now Minister), with a Board of Experts by Experience.

That review was commissioned as promised in the previous government's 2019 manifesto. Maybe Baroness Casey is doing the adult social care. Sadly Teresa May was ditched before she could implement her plan to hand over the budget for SEND school transport - with the budget for chronically sick and disabled people's health and community services - to be handed out by direct payment to us in need.

==========

The consultation
- opened 2 years ago

8 October 2024
Law Commission seeks views on disabled children’s social care law
- this launched a 3 month consultation
- closed 20 January 2025

==========

The recommendations
- published 1 year ago

16 September 2025
Law Commission recommends changes to disabled children’s social care law

See the attached .pdf file (220 pages):
The Final Report on Disabled Children's Social Care
Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 3(2) of the Law Commissions Act 1965.

"The full report and recommendations are now with government for consideration. The reforms are likely to affect over half a million disabled children in England. Implementation would require government approval and new legislation to be introduced in Parliament.

"The Law Commission recommends keeping disabled children within existing Children Act protections while introducing a discrete set of rights and entitlements for disabled children into that Act.

"This new, unified framework should be accompanied by dedicated and comprehensive guidance setting out the rights and responsibilities of disabled children, families and local authorities.

"This guidance should include material which helps local authorities to ensure that there is a more appropriate balance struck between identifying and meeting the needs of disabled children and their families in a non-stigmatising way, and safeguarding them from harm and abuse.

"The recommendations aim to balance meeting disability-related needs whilst maintaining essential safeguarding protections.

"As a first step toward this national system, the Law Commission recommends that the Government carry out further work – involving disabled children, families and local authorities – to decide what the eligibility criteria should be and ensure that they are financially sustainable.

"Other key reforms include:

- giving disabled children express rights to request social care assessments

- ensuring they receive independent advocacy when needed, to make sure that their voices are heard.

"The proposals would also strengthen transition planning to adulthood and improve cooperation between health, education and social care services.

=========

The Project

"The Law Commission has completed its review of disabled children’s social care law and published its final report. The recommendations in our report provide a comprehensive set of reforms to disabled children’s social care law. The reforms we recommend represent the most substantial change to this area of law since the Children Act 1989."

=======

Next steps

"It is now for Government to review and consider our recommendation for reform.

"10 March 2026
Department for Education gave their interim response to our recommendations,

"3 September 2026
Department of Education gave their further response to our recommendations."

=========

SEND merger

For the last 6 months the Government was consulting with the Send community, and plans to integrate a SEND plan with a Disabled Children's Social Care plan.

Maybe the Government was also consulting with the disabled children's community - as recommended - to help select and secure sustainable (financed) eligibility criteria (may it be for all the no-name illnesses, too).

Or maybe that consultation will follow.

Ah, the Government did do both consultations, as explained in the initial response letter.

==========

The attached .pdf file is the 220-page Final Report with its Recommendations

 

[bicentennial]

My concern is the very low profile given to the paediatricians, physicians and psychiatrists being the experts on protecting disabled and neuro-divergent children. Their concerns come across loud and clear. Who else demanded and got a protection expert on the team for every case? Utterly inexplicable. So not explained.

10 March 2026
The Government’s Initial Response
to the Law Commission’s
‘Disabled Children’s Social Care’ report

Families Adaptive Template

Department for Education
Sanctuary Buildings
20 Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BT
tel: 0370 000 2288
www.education.gov.uk/contactus/dfe

Department of Education
Josh MacAlister OBE MP
Minister for Children and Families

Professor Alison Young
Commissioner for Public Law and the Law in Wales
Email to: Connor.Johnston@lawcommission.gov.uk

10 March 2026

Dear Professor Young,

The Government’s Initial Response to the Law Commission’s ‘Disabled Children’s Social Care’ report

I am writing today in response to the Law Commission’s Disabled Children’s Social Care final report, published on 16 September 2025, following an extensive review of the legal framework governing social care for disabled children in England.

I would like to thank the Commission for its thorough work and for engaging so extensively with children, families and professionals throughout the review.

The Department for Education commissioned this review in April 2023 to bring much needed clarity to a legal framework that families and practitioners have long told us is too complex and difficult to navigate. The Commission’s 40 recommendations provide an important foundation for improving the consistency, transparency and accessibility of support for disabled children and their families.

In line with the protocol agreed between the Lord Chancellor and the Law Commission, this letter constitutes the Department’s initial response, provided within six months of publication. A full response will follow within twelve months and will set out which recommendations the Government accepts, rejects or accepts in a modified form, alongside any plans for implementation.

Over the coming months, we will engage closely with children, young people, families, local authorities, professionals and representative groups to ensure that our full response reflects a wide range of views and the lived experience of those most affected. This engagement will help us test the practical implications of the recommendations and consider how any changes to the law could best support effective practice on the ground.

Alongside this work, we believe the roll out of Family Help as part of the Families First Partnership (FFP) programme, backed by £2.4bn of funding over three years, is already beginning to deliver many of the intended outcomes of the report. Our wider reforms are designed to make a real and tangible difference to children and families, including disabled children.

Our vision for Family Help is a seamless, non-stigmatising offer of support delivered by multi-disciplinary, community-based teams. Support for families and child protection should be organised around the family, rather than requiring families to navigate multiple systems.

By law, community services were supposed to be person-centred for years now. I wonder how some unspecified "multi-disciplinary" service will end the requirement to navigate their multiple systems.

Transparency would help a lot. It is strange how these patchwork teams make records about a client's case, share it all with each-other, but don't make it accessible to the client, and are too busy to inform and consult on the case.

We are taking significant steps to remove the stigma from asking for help, with more SEND professionals available through integrated front doors for families to access practical support without judgement or unnecessarily burdensome assessments.

We also want to see quick and decisive action where appropriate, taken by expert child protection practitioners who are part of dedicated multi-agency teams.

I see some social workers are still saying that all neuro-divergent children are easily abused and so they are all at risk of abuse and so they all need a social worker to speak for them. In what other service is a protection expert routinely part of the service instead of being on-call?

The engagement highlighted above will sit alongside the Government’s wider SEND reform activity, as on Monday 23rd February, we published SEND reform: putting children and young people first - GOV.UK, launching a formal public consultation on our proposals to improve the experiences and outcomes of children and young people with SEND, and their families. This builds on the National Conversation on SEND, which launched in December 2025, reaching over 8,000 children, parents, professionals and experts across the country.

We heard how the current system needs to work better for children and young people, work better for parents, work better for early years settings, schools and colleges, and work better for local authorities. We have used this feedback to inform designs of a system that provides everyone with the support and tools they need to achieve and thrive. The consultation period runs to 18th May. We will carefully consider the responses we receive, and there alignment to the Law Commission's recommendations, on the important intersection between the SEND system and children's social care for disabled children.

The Government remains firmly committed to creating a simpler, more consistent and more effective framework for disabled children’s social care. The Law Commission’s report is a significant contribution to that aim. Thank you again for the Commission’s work on this important review. We look forward to continuing constructive engagement as we develop our full response.

Yours sincerely,

Josh MacAlister OBE MP
Minister for Children and Families

==========

The SEND education system consultation
- closed on 18 May 2026

Disabled Children's care law decision
- by the end of this year

NHS not mentioned
- but it is an NHS contract pays for the co-ordinator to integrate the local health and social care services, and the disabled child's service network is required to have a protection expert on the case - which is exceptional and not explained. Protection experts are the only specified discipline in the amorphous network template.

The professionals have their handbooks. The children and their families need a handbook on how to identify, engage, lay down the law to the protection expert on their case, and how to disengage. Is there a reason for a protection expert to be on the case? After 3 unsubstantiated investigations it must stop.

============

3 September 2026
The Government’s holding response
to the Law Commission’s
‘Disabled Children’s Social Care’ report

Families Adaptive Template

Department for Education
Sanctuary Buildings
20 Great Smith Street
London SW1P 3BT
tel: 0370 000 2288
www.education.gov.uk/contactus/dfe

Department of Education
Josh MacAlister OBE MP
Minister for Children and Families

Professor Alison Young
Commissioner for Public Law and the Law in Wales
By email: Alison.Young@lawcommission.gov.uk

3 September 2026

The Government’s holding response to the Law Commission’s ‘Disabled Children’s Social Care’ report

Dear

I am writing regarding the government’s response to the Law Commission’s Disabled Children’s Social Care final report.

As I set out in the Department’s interim response to the report in March 2026, I would like to reiterate my thanks to the Law Commission for the thorough work on this important issue.

Government has, and continues to, carefully review the responses to the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Reform: Putting Children and Young People First consultation, ahead of tabling legislation on this issue. Given the significant links between the Law Commission's recommendations in this area and the issues being considered through the recent SEND reform consultation and wider reform programme, aligning our response with this work will enable us to explain more clearly how the government's broader reforms address those recommendations.

I have therefore concluded that it would be preferable to delay, for a short period, the government’s response to the Law Commission's report to provide us with the best opportunity to align with our response to the SEND Reform consultation and provide clarity on the way forward for children and families. This will support a more coherent and joined-up approach, allowing the government to provide a fuller response to the recommendations.

I recognise that this means we will not meet the response date set out in protocol. However, I believe this approach will provide greater clarity and consistency by allowing Government to consider related impacts on the SEND and Children’s Social Care systems as a whole before responding.

I am nonetheless committed to publishing the government’s response to the law commission within this calendar year. As set out in the interim response, government remains committed to creating a simpler, more consistent and effective framework for disabled children’s social care and will set out its response once consideration of the related reforms has concluded.

OFFICIAL

I have copied this letter to the Lord Chancellor.

Yours sincerely,

Josh MacAlister OBE MP

Minister for Children and Families

OFFICIAL

The .pdf files attached below are the intitial and further response letters from the Minister for Children and Families now parked in the Department of Education, with some remit across 3 services - education, health and community (and transitional). I guess there must be a doctor handy to advise on the child protection suspicions.

 

[bicentennial]

Documents

" If you need any of these documents in alternative formats, email us on dcsc@lawcommission.gov.uk

Report and related documents

Final report

Summary of final report


Final report (easy-read version)

Final report (large print version)


Summary of the final report (large print version)

Summary of the final report (audio version)


Final report impact assessment


Government’s interim response 16 March 2026

Government’s further response 3 September 2026


Consultation papers and response forms

Consultation paper and summary


Alternative formats


Consultation (Easy read version)

Summary of consultation (large print)

Summary of consultation (audio)

Background information​

Terms of reference

Deprivation of liberty research

Draft impact assessment

Contact us​

Email:
dcsc@lawcommission.gov.uk

Post:
Disabled Children’s Social Care team,
Law Commission,
1st Floor Tower,
52 Queen Anne’s Gate,
London SW1H 9AG